Daily HealthBeat Tip

Big kids do worse.

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I'm Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

It's no longer a pure good thing to see a growing kid. Too many are growing around the middle � getting fat. And researchers say it's creating a growing risk of diabetes.

Joyce Lee of the University of Michigan investigated that risk. Her study in the journal Diabetes Care was supported by the National Institutes of Health.

Lee found obese children are more than twice as likely as normal-weight children to have diabetes:

"The association that we found between obesity and the likelihood of having diabetes suggests that we are going to be seeing greater numbers of children with diabetes as this epidemic of obesity in U.S. children continues to rise." (10 seconds)

Lee says parents need to check how big their kids are � and make sure the kids get proper diet and exercise, especially if they are too big.

Learn more at www.hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I'm Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: June 22, 2006

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